Ahmad ibn Tulun: Governor of Abbasid Egypt, 868–884

By Matthew S. Gordon

Ahmad ibn Tulun (835–884) governed Egypt on behalf of the Abbasid dynasty for sixteen years. An aggressive and innovative actor, he pursued an ambitious political agenda, including the introduction of dynastic rule over Egypt, that put him at odds with his imperial masters. Throughout, however, he retained close ties to the Abbasid house and at no point did he assert outright independence. In this volume, Matthew Gordon considers Ibn Tulun’s many achievements in office as well as the crises, including the betrayals of his eldest son and close clients, that marred his singular career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Academic
• Release date: May 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781786079947

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INTRODUCTION

Travelers to modern-day Cairo know Ahmad ibn Tulun from the elegant mosque that bears his name. A centerpiece of the city’s extraordinary architectural legacy, it is the oldest of Egypt’s original mosques. Its features include graceful arcaded halls, an expansive courtyard, and a harmony of its many parts. The mosque underwent renovations later in the medieval period, notably under Husam al-Din Lajin (r. 1296–1299), a thirteenth-century Egyptian strongman. These included the addition of a domed ablution fountain; additions to the original mihrab (the prayer niche, which identifies the proper direction of prayer); and the spiral-shaped minaret (the tower from which, typically, Muslims are summoned to prayer) that stands today. But the principal structure remains as constructed under Ibn Tulun’s careful eye. Its survival is remarkable given Cairo’s long history of earthquakes and its seismic political past. Refurbished again in the twentieth century, the mosque functions today as a masjid (local Muslim prayer hall) and significant tourist site.

The building, for most of its history, has been enveloped by Cairo, a dynamic, crowded metropolis, in the later medieval period as it is today. But Cairo was founded in the late tenth century, well after Ibn Tulun’s sojourn in office. The governor (Ar., amir) and his ninth-century contemporaries viewed the mosque in a more modest setting. Its size, then, must have left an impression: built on a monumental plan, it loomed over the commercial and residential neighborhoods that surrounded it.

There was, however, a good deal more to the structure than its bulk. Ibn Tulun intended the mosque to signal his abiding commitment to Islam and the duties of his fellow Muslims. Much will be said later of his adherence to the faith. The building was likewise a political gesture: Ibn Tulun built it early in his tenure precisely at the point of consolidating his hold over Egypt. The mosque thus joined piety to power, and the amir knew to associate himself with the potent mix. And there was the building’s cost: Ibn Tulun’s biographers make much of the sums spent on the project. The quality of workmanship – delicate plaster carving, fine woodwork, and a variety of innovative architectural details – remains in evidence today. This was the work of skilled and, one thinks, well-paid artisans. Such costs cannot have been lost on Ibn Tulun’s contemporaries. One source, in fact, describes angry accusations leveled at the governor that the moneys in question must have come from corrupt sources. The mosque, then, spoke of the wealth to which its patron had access and his efforts at directing it to secure his considerable political aims.

Ibn Tulun governed Egypt for sixteen years (868–884). He did so on behalf of the Abbasid dynasty, at that point over a century in power. In this sense among others, he was the product of empire. Baghdad born, he was raised in Samarra, a sprawling city located north on the Tigris River and founded, in the 830s, to replace Baghdad as the empire’s hub. Like his father before him, Ibn Tulun served in the imperial military, in Iraq and on the Abbasid-Byzantine frontier in northern Syria. It was as an imperial appointee – his official position was resident governor – that he departed Samarra, at age thirty-four, to take up duties in Egypt. Throughout he retained close ties to the imperial center and, in his fashion, devoted much effort to defending the Abbasid polity.

Illustration

A view of Ibn Tulun’s mosque. The domed structure and circular minaret are likely later replacements of two original Tulunid-era structures. The image captures, however, the expanse and elegance of the original building.

But had Ibn Tulun been little more than a dutiful imperial servant, there would be little point to this book. It is the pursuit on his part of an ambitious political agenda that draws our interest. To his opponents, and there were many, the amir became a renegade, a threat to Abbasid sovereignty and the integrity of the empire. The accusations mounted, and Ibn Tulun devoted much effort in fending off each such charge. There is much to learn of his aims, of course, in these responses. On two points, it seems we can take him on his word: Ibn Tulun never pursued either fully independent rule over Egypt or the demise of the Abbasid regime. Nearly all the written and physical evidence supports this view. Again, he remained committed to the Abbasid caliphate, in title and practice alike, for the duration of his time in office.

But, in the pursuit of his goals, he did confront his imperial masters, and thus roiled political waters. Contemporary and later observers took notice. In his Sirat Ahmad ibn Tulun, a biography of the governor, Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Balawi (fl. late tenth century) describes the younger Ibn Tulun as forceful, headstrong, a view shared by nearly every other surviving source. The amir, as these many references suggest, brought a new aggressive style both to his administration of Egypt and interactions with the imperial state. Small wonder that his relations with the Abbasid house grew strained. Indeed, on at least one occasion, the Abbasids attempted to remove him by force.

What follows is a political biography, an account of one medieval Near Eastern power broker’s approach to office. It turns, in good part, on the problem of understanding these seeming contradictions of Ibn Tulun’s tenure as governor, then as ruler of Egypt. My argument is that Ibn Tulun sought a delicate balance: a commitment to the survival of the Abbasid house, on the one hand, and a willingness to shake the prevailing political order, on the other. Was he successful? The indications are that he overstepped his limits, a wrinkle to be explored further on.

The drama of Ibn Tulun’s career is of interest in its own right. To effect his aims, the amir donned a number of hats. He became the paterfamilias of an unwieldy and highly visible household. A devout Muslim, he turned routinely to demonstrations of piety, right-mindedness, and charity. Frequently a severe decision maker, he confronted his opponents, when needed, with cruelty and violence, but knew also to extend mercy and even kindness. And, a successful dynast, he founded a regional state. Each facet of the man speaks to his reputation in Islamic and Near Eastern history. Each is a topic deserving of close study. But no less interesting is what his tenure tells us of the politics of the early medieval Islamic period. Tracing the amir’s career allows us to take the measure of the Abbasid Empire from a significant provincial perspective. At one time a pre-eminent world power, the later ninth-century Abbasid state was much reduced, a once-great imperial polity struggling not simply for relevance but for survival.

THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY SETTING

Ibn Tulun departed Samarra for Egypt at a critical moment in the history of the Arab-Islamic Empire. Founded in the wake of the seventh-century Arab conquests, the empire had at one time stretched from Iberia (Spain) and the western reaches of North Africa across Egypt and the Near East to eastern Iran and northern India.

The first Arab-Islamic dynasty to govern the vast territory was the Umayyad house (661–750). It laid the groundwork for two far-reaching developments: the Islamization of Iberia, North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia, and the Arabization of many though not all of these same regions. The two currents, though distinct, interlocked on many levels. The result – the dissemination of Islam and the spread of Arab culture, notably the Arabic language, and its literary and scientific traditions – transformed the course of Mediterranean and Eurasian history. The conversion to Islam by pagans, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and members of other faith communities took place at different rates and for different reasons. Egypt, a majority Christian land, may not have become principally Muslim until the fourteenth century. Historians argue this point: some insist that the threshold to a Muslim majority was crossed much earlier. The adoption of the Arabic language and literature, particularly poetry, and the cross-pollination of Arab culture and science with the cultural patterns of the Mediterranean and Eurasian worlds took less time. Documents from early Islamic Egypt indicate that Greek, Coptic, and Hebrew, the languages of pre-seventh-century Christian Egypt, gave ground to Arabic early on. The latter emerged as the language of commerce, government and, eventually, daily expression.

The Umayyads, for all their achievements, finally let slip their hold on power. A violent mid-eighth-century coup, sprung from southern Iraq and Khurasan, the enormous stretch of eastern Iran, swept the family aside. A new Arab dynasty, the Abbasid house, took its place (see Map 1). The Abbasids relied for long decades on a flourishing agrarian and commercial economy, a well-integrated military, and a lively urban culture. The first caliphs governed well, and the empire enjoyed roughly a century of relative stability. But the puzzles of ruling an unwieldy realm remained. Civil war followed the death of the fifth Abbasid caliph, the storied Harun al-Rashid, in 809. The empire would survive this one round of internecine violence though in much altered form. But the seeds were sown: the great Arab-Islamic empire would give way, by the first part of the tenth century, to regionalism and political fragmentation.

The civil war ended only in 819 with the arrival in Baghdad of Abd Allah al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833). Hard-nosed and cerebral, al-Ma’mun was perhaps the most controversial of the Abbasid caliphs. Having gained prominence as governor of Khurasan, he used his office to challenge the seated caliph, his brother al-Amin. A first phase of war ended with the latter’s murder in 813: al-Ma’mun’s troops beheaded the unlucky caliph along a sandy bank of the Tigris. The shock of regicide haunted the ruling house from that point on. Through luck, diplomacy, and the backing of leading military families, chief among them the Tahirid clan, al-Ma’mun returned central authority to the imperial office and regained the unity of the realm. To secure Egypt, a wealthy and strategically well-placed province, al-Ma’mun even campaigned there in person in 832, a year before his death. (He was one of only two sitting caliphs to visit Egypt prior to the thirteenth century.)

Al-Amin’s murder and the near loss of key provinces, including Egypt, were but the most obvious costs of the war. Longer-term costs had a more subtle effect. So, for example, the caliphate now vested its military and security forces with ever-greater authority. No empire can exist without the capacity to defend its borders and crush domestic opposition. The Abbasids were no exception. The family, after all, owed its ascendance to armed rebellion, and Baghdad, the great imperial center, was constructed in good part to house its regiments. But the extent to which the imperial house turned to repression was new. It seems unsurprising, in this light, that al-Ma’mun was succeeded by his forceful brother, Abu Ishaq al-Mu`tasim (r. 833–842). The latter’s success had much to do with a brawny personal style and tight relations with the imperial command.

To bolster the strength of the caliphate, the two men experimented with a new-style military body. The new force consisted of Turkic and Central Asian recruits brought into the Near East from beyond its eastern borders. These men were acquired by the Abbasid state from Central Asian slave traders or seized directly; a smaller number were purchased in Baghdad. They were then pressed into service as commanders and elite fighters and, it seems, subsequently manumitted and converted. Ibn Tulun’s father, Tulun, was among the first of these young bonded soldiers.

The recruitment and arming of enslaved and freed persons was not new to the Near East and neighboring regions; the Roman Empire had done so in previous centuries and similar practice can be found in Chinese and Central Asian history. Historians continue to debate how the practice played out in the early Abbasid era. Its first appearance under the Abbasids may have been in North Africa with its use, in this case of African recruits, by the Aghlabids, a long-standing governing family. The idea of exploiting the populations of Iran and Central Asia for this purpose likely came first to al-Ma’mun and his circle. It can be seen as one of that caliph’s impetuous policies. The earliest reference, from Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), a ninth-century Iraqi scholar, is direct: al-Ma’mun and his advisors introduced the new force but turned its command over to his younger brother, Abu Ishaq. On taking office as caliph, the latter shaped the units into a formidable army. Following his accession to office in 833 – and adoption of the regnal title al-Mu`tasim (the guarantor of God) – the Turkic-Central Asian military emerged as a mainstay of the imperial state.

A second, longer-term effect of the civil war concerned the standing of the caliphate. Despite efforts by al-Ma’mun and his supporters to boost the prestige of the office, it never fully recovered from the war. Caliphs – Umayyad and Abbasid – had always faced opposition. What imperial house does not? Opponents to the caliphate typically expressed themselves in religious form: they connected Abbasid misrule, as they saw it, to the dynasty’s impiety. But the civil conflict of 809–833 raised questions of Abbasid legitimation as never before. The killing of al-Amin, though not the first instance of regicide in Islamic history, nonetheless sent a message: Abbasid caliphs were disposable.

The standing of the ruling house also suffered as rising social elites, particularly in Muslim urban quarters, asserted forms of authority largely independent of the caliphate. Such was the case of the religious establishment, represented by legal scholars and their supporters in Baghdad and other prominent cities. These men, representing different strands of Islam, were closely tied to merchant and other elite circles in Iraq, Syria, Khurasan, and North Africa. Interaction with the imperial state was both necessary and practical. After all, the caliphate offered investment opportunities and high-level patronage. But the prestige of the caliphate had slipped. If, in earlier decades, the caliph’s office seemed inviolable, it was certainly no longer, and religious leaders was all too happy to step up.

But, again, decline occurred at a gradual pace. Al-Mu`tasim – a commanding figure – proved a worthy heir to his brother. Bringing muscle to the caliphate, he consolidated imperial authority over the provinces. The empire thus regained its feet for decades to come. Egypt, as always, was of particular concern. Al-Mu`tasim, prior to his ascent to office, had served as its governor. In that capacity, in 829–830, he led the Turkic-Central Asian units against a rebellion in the Nile Delta. One early source describes the army as four thousand strong. It is likely that their number included Tulun, Ahmad ibn Tulun’s father. If so, he was the first member of the family to see the Nile. More will be said further on about the Turkic military. Suffice it here to say that al-Mu`tasim’s campaign introduced the Turkic command to the province. In the later ninth century, nearly all governors and many subordinate officeholders in Egypt were drawn from these same circles. It was as deputy of one such commander that Ibn Tulun – himself a mid-ranked Turkic officer – would arrive in Egypt.

Al-Mu`tasim, once in office, arrived at a far-reaching decision of his own. It was driven by the need to accommodate the Turkic-Central Asian regiments and a growing bureaucratic state. Following a hostile response to the presence of the Turkic units in Baghdad, the new caliph broke ground for a new capital at Samarra, located north along the Tigris River (see Map 1). Samarra replaced Baghdad as the Abbasid capital for some fifty years (836–892), although it never gained the commercial, cultural and intellectual prestige of the older city. The ruin fields of Samarra – stretching for kilometers outside the modern Iraqi city bearing the same name – attest to the size and wealth of al-Mu`tasim’s new center. But Samarra, following several decades of dynamic growth, became the venue of a devastating cycle of civil war. Internecine conflict, reopening old wounds, tore at the empire and further undercut Abbasid authority.

At least two factors fed the new conflict. The first concerned the Turkic-Central Asian military command. Wooed by the Abbasids, these men gained lucrative political and economic interests in the years following al-Mu`tasim’s reign. The commanders, anxious to defend their interests, finally stepped in to exert direct control over the Abbasid court and, thus, imperial decision-making. The effort saw the violent removal of five caliphs, three of whom fell to military assassins. The humiliation of the Abbasid house was thorough. But the upheaval took a toll as well on the Turkic command itself, as cliques of officers and their supporters turned on one another. (Samarra remained an unhappy place for the Abbasid family and, thus, when opportunity allowed, the imperial house would return to Baghdad at the close of the ninth century.)

The second factor was an extended revolt across southern Iraq. Known usually as the Zanj Rebellion (869–883), it consumed the resources of the caliphate. The Zanj, a population of largely